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Victorian Recreation
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Victorian Recreation Fashion History
Do It Yourself Victorian EntertainmentThe Victorians were particularly good at being entertained and at entertaining others or themselves. Their performances at home were amateur, but they entered the spirit of do it yourself family parties with elaborately organised entertainments. The hosts and guests joined in charades, dancing, games, fireworks, magic lantern shows and piano sing songs making their own lively entertainment. Music Groups
Music groups sprang up everywhere and by 1857 'The Halle Orchestra' of Manchester was compared to 'The London Philharmonic Society'. Right - Accomplished young ladies at the piano circa 1856. Music helped to pass winter evenings and all governesses were supposed to teach this refinement to young ladies. Dancing was closely associated with musical ability. DancingDancing was a living tradition with local variations. Both Victoria and Albert were musical and they influenced the popularity of music and dancing in Victorian homelife and society. The Queen gave evening concerts at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. In 1840, the Prince upgraded the Queen's Private Band into a good string orchestra. Mendelssohn often performed for them. Mendelssohn had a high opinion of the Prince's musical ability. Waltz And PolkaThe Victorians loved dancing. Johann Strauss the elder (1804-49), as part of the coronation festivities had brought the new Viennese waltz to England. Queen Victoria thought Prince Albert waltzed beautifully. Newer square dances were popular as were older dances such as the Sir Roger De Coverley, jigs, hornpipes, country dances, flash jigs. Then in 1840 everyone started to do the Polka which was sweeping Europe among rich and poor. Dancing at home, in assembly rooms, in taverns, on the village green, at places of amusement, such as Vauxhall and Cremorne Gardens and at Royal residences was very popular. The lively simple Polka dance was popular with the labouring classes. VauxhallWell bred men also enjoyed haunting Vauxhall and Cremorne Pleasure Gardens. They were never frequented by well bred young women. Vauxhall in London first opened in 1661 and after a fashionable existence in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries lost any respectability it ever had by the Victorian era. Young men still ate, drank, danced, listened to music and chased women down the Dark Walk. They still watched firework displays, pantomimes and balloon ascents, but once the gentry stopped visiting Vauxhall, it soon lost ground and was closed in 1859. Cremorne GardensCremorne Gardens in Chelsea were new. They had been transformed from a farm
into a pleasure garden in 1843. It had a monster dancing stage and landscaped
attractions wit Right -The Dancing Platform at Cremorne Gardens by Phoebus Levin 1864 and held at the London Museum, UK. FairsFairs were held all over Britain from city to village green, but the first special fair of the Queen's new reign was held in Hyde Park. Every kind of article from ribbons to pies was sold. The Victorians loved the macabre and looking at freaks from fat men, fat women to the contrast of living skeletons, two headed ladies and for a time the so called Elephant man to mind reading dogs and performing horses. The crowds loved them all. TheatresTo stay solvent the two oldest theatres, Covent Garden and Drury Lane presented all sorts of concoctions as well as regular drama. They put on farces, melodramas, operettas, trained horse and dog acts, harlequinades, rope dancers, bits of Shakespeare livened up with music, all items that could be as likely seen at a fair too. No theatrical production consisted of one work, but of various three or four hour acts. Actresses were often fashion leaders and it was notoriously difficult to get actresses to appear in historical costume. The Music HallVictorian prudery inhibited many Playwrights because of the outwardly respectable ideas that were common. In contrast the Music Hall with its double entendres drew the less attractive violent fringe of theatre audiences. This Victorian institution catered chiefly for the working man and lasted to the end of World War I when it was replaced by the cinema. ~ The Society NovelThe society novel existed for new middle classes who might have mingled with the aristocracy. It went into exhaustive detail on dress, food, furniture, stately homes, conversation and behaviour in every situation. It created innocent heroines where evil must be punished and virtue rewarded. SingingSinging especially of the romantic ballad was popular enough for 700 publishers to make a living printing ballad broadsheets. Patriotic songs like Rule Britannia and comic songs like the Policeman were enjoyed too. Songs from poems like 'Come Into the Garden Maud', 'Sally in our Alley' and 'Cherry Ripe' all gave pleasure. The Derby Day Races
All classes mixed at Derby week which was both a fair and a race week. Sellers
of food and drink with
trays slung round necks catered for the masses. Derby Day was
held at Epsom racecourse and was a wonderful holiday in May or sometimes June.
Weather could be fine and sunny or wet and if not too bad the races went ahead.
Left - Derby Day by William Frith Powell the master of the panoramic Victorian scene and held at the Tate Gallery London, UK. 1856-8 Racing, the sport of kings, was much loved by the masses. The races gave the poor an opportunity to enjoy their favourite pastimes of skittles, sparring and boxing. Pastimes, Sports and Fitness
Right - Late Victorian sportswoman.
Left - Gentleman on a Penny Farthing. Between 1870 and 1900 sporting activities for both sexes grew rapidly. Women soon played golf and cricket, sailed, swam and bathed publicly. Once the bicycle arrived in 1881 cycle clubs for enthusiasts formed and it was a wonderful way for young couples to socialise with limited supervision. The special clothing that women needed for these sports evolved from reform dress first initiated by Amelia Bloomer around 1850. Sports dress is discussed in detail in its own sections under Rational Dress, Early Swimwear, Swimwear, Sports Fashion Until 1960 and Fitness Fashion. * For more information about the Victorian Era
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